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DANIEL BOYLE, one of Saline Township's most respected citizens and independent farmers, has been a resident of Jefferson County, Ohio for the past fifty years and has spent thirty-eight of them on his present farm. He was boen in County Cumberland, England, December 25, 1843 and is a son of John and Catherine Boyle. The parents of Mr. Boyel were quiet, hard-working people, the father earning a subsistence for wife and family in the coal mines. For a number of years, until his son Daniel was thirteen, he performed his tasks with safety and then came an accident which made necessary the amputation of is leg, which was followed by his death. A heavy weight of responsibility then fell on the young son and he continued mine work in his mative land until 1859. He was the eldest of the six children and the only one to come to America, but he remained with his mother until the others were able to provide for her. His brothers were Robert, Thomas, and John, and his sisters, Margaret and Catherine. Thomas and Margaret still survive, but John was killed in the mines one year later than his father. Daniel Boyle crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a vessel called the Dreadnaught, and his first work in this country was secured on the A. B. & C. Railroad, at Northfield, twenty miles from Cleveland. In 1859 he was induced to come to Yellow Creek to work on the river boats, but after he had witnessed the treatment accorded the signed sailors on these boats, he declined the work and entered the employ of a brick company at New Cumberland, W. Va., working through the summer seasons and during the winters making trips for the company to New Orleans. In July, 1861, he went to Nova Scotia and spent one year there in the coal mines, but the spring of 1862 he returned to Jefferson County where he had formerly formed pleasant acquaintances, and settled at New Somerset, where he leased and operated a coal bank for twelve years. In 1872 he purchased a farm of sixty acres in Saline Township, twenty of which he subsequently sold to his son-in-law, but has resided here ever since, his main occupation having been farming. This land was patented from the Government and the staunch old house which is comfortable and roomy, was erected by N. Miller & Son, October 1, 1830. There is an abundance of fire clay, and five veins of coal underline the surface of the farm. In June, 1861, Mr. Boyle was married to Miss Sarah Daniels, who was born one and a half miles from the present home farm. Her parents, Pierce B. and Mary M. Daniels, came originally from Pennsylvania. To Mr. and Mrs. Boyle the following children were born: John, who died at the age of thirty-four years; Martha, who married Albert Felton and lives in Saline Township; Jennie, who is the wife of William Thomas, residing one mile from Empire, in Knox Township, and has eight children--Edgar, Daniel, Thomas, George, Cyrus, Martha (the wife of Henry Shaffer), Margaret and Earl, who is deceased; William C., a farmer in Knox Township, who married Martha Metz; and Emma, who lives at home. Two children died in infancy. Mr. Boyle is one of the township's most intelligent and well informed men and he has always taken a deep interest in the cause of education. For thirty-five years he served on the school board in Saline Township and prior to that in Knox Township, and has been president of this body. In politics he is a Democrat and has frequently been elected to tonship offices and for the past sixteen years has served as road supervisor. He is one of the leading members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Saline Township, of which he has been a trustee for forty years and is a member of the present board of stewards. In June, 1907, Mr. Boyle gave himself the pleasure of a visit to his old home in England, sailing from New York to Southampton on the Oceanic and returning by Liverpool, on the Celtic. Probably only then did he dully realize the wonderful changes that have taken place not only in methods of ocean travel but in his old home and his new one, since he first crossed those mighty waters.  Return to Family Tales
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